


Fulfillment

by rodabonor



Series: Unveiled [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Baby Hannibal, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rodabonor/pseuds/rodabonor
Summary: Will is the devil. He visits Hannibal at the orphanage when he's just lost his family.





	Fulfillment

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ficlet, taking place in the same AU as [Unveiled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963201/chapters/34675982) \- you should maybe read that one first, but all you really need to know is in the summary.

Will comes to those who are in need. The weak, the vulnerable; easy prey. He dislikes thinking of himself in terms of good and evil, because it’s a fundamentally human way of categorization, and he is not human. 

He does, however, have a clear view of what he is and what he wants to be. Despite everything.

The good-evil divide may be reserved for humans in the sense that only they are judged, but that doesn’t mean Will is beyond evaluation. Just because his actions and intentions no longer have consequences doesn’t mean he can’t theoretically be placed on the same scale.

Will wants to be good.

*

When Will first becomes aware of the boy, he can neither hear nor see him. He is a distant thought that makes itself known to him, disconnected impressions that shape the outline of a human child. The boy is nothing but rage and sorrow and desperate regret. Fierce hatred, aimed nowhere specific and somewhere incredibly specific at the same time. Will has encountered many children in distress, but this boy glows with it – a flash of lightning across Will’s internal skies. He can hear thunder in its wake.

The hassles of traveling are insignificant to Will. He is where the boy is the second he wishes himself to be.

The place he finds himself in is almost nothing but grey. Clothes grey with exposure, bed linens washed out, even the moonlight seems weaker where it spills through the window, lighting up rows of beds with children sleeping in them, faces ashen and gaunt in the low light.

It is quiet. Almost eerily so. Then a sharp scream suddenly cuts into the night and there’s a soft rustle of sheets, a few weary groans. A boy shouts at the source of the scream to keep quiet, and then there’s nothing but breathless, muffled sobs.

Will makes his way over to the crying boy’s bed, floors creaking under his feet in a way that is only audible to him. The boy has his face pressed into the pillow, and all Will can see is a mop of dirty blonde hair and quivering limbs under a thin blanket. Once Will is practically towering over the child, he hears that it isn’t wordless sobbing at all, but a quiet chant:

_Mischa, Mischa, Mischa._

Will closes his eyes and sees teeth, bloodied and small and filthy. He feels the gouging claws of hunger, a pit opening wide in his gut. A broken arm. A scream. A wooden spoon. He needs little else. There’s been a war.

Will puts a gentle hand on the boy’s head. The boy shouldn’t be able to feel anything apart from a release of pressure: a quiet, inexplicable assurance that he’s not alone. But he still won’t stop shaking, even after his chanting has ceased. Will can still see it on his pillow, the name of his little sister smeared onto the fabric. 

The boy carries her with him in ways he shouldn’t. Will understands why he can’t stop shaking.

Without thinking twice about it, Will climbs into bed and draws the boy close, fitting him in his arms and wiping the tears from his warm, soft face. He searches the child for things that make him happy, hoping to find a memory or a storybook, but he doesn’t. The inside of this little boy’s head is streaked with red and the only thing he wishes for is the white-hot pleasure of vengeance. 

Will wants to be good. It’s all he’s ever wanted. He never was.

He touches the child’s temples, filling his head with other people’s screaming, other people’s blood, the way he can sense the boy imagining it. The boy goes liquid in his arms, features smoothing out in relief. His jaw hangs slack, pale lips no longer trembling. They curl into a soft smile as the screams mingle, reaching a shared crescendo.

Will hopes this child will live to grow up. He wants to see the fulfillment of his potential, wants to find a tableau of his own making, removed from the confines of his imagination. He thinks it would be a sight to behold.


End file.
